the bests of the summer

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thunderstorm breakfasts with em & tor // peonies // pie day // indian food in wicker park // the architecture exhibit at the art institute // sharon van etten at millennial park // beer and popcorn // the lilac parade // biking to all souls // lemonade for the first time // library time with dr. foster // wallace stegner // prayer on the green couch // mint pea soup // ELLIE // gardens with dr. brabanec // biking home in rain // no internet // father martin on prayer // milosz mondays // birchwood kitchen // georges bernanos // polenta and mushrooms // days of heaven // sunsets with mary at marshall park // just mary // sam's slippers // sylvi's kindness // arvo part // lots of damien jurado // attali and jens // the guide to filling our days // agnes martin // swimming in green lake with rebecca // bainbridge island alone // golden gardens // walking always // lavender lemonade // lavender everything // all the ferries // sea hair // jayne in seattle // ballard public library // canal walks with mr. wolfe // mark jarman // biking with aunt april // lake time // listening to records in fremont // earl gray ice cream // the loganberry festival // coffee with emily at le reve that morning // letters received // birthday picnic // sunday market // delancey // the locks (seven times) // chats with taylor // getting picked up from the memphis airport by the girls // stained-glass seals // andrew wyeth on my bed // andrew wyeth with mom // jan and lee // holding a chicken // gasworks park, both times // avocado toast // tired hands with derek // coming home after eight months

The boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places indeed, and gosh and golly it was such a good summer.
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we have the given life

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Yesterday was twenty one years and a loganberry festival and Whidbey Island and picking berries and red-stained fingers and five forks digging into one whole pie and red-checkered tablecloths and braiding wheat and sitting on thorny weeds and the windows down in a big suburban and loganberry wine that tasted like drinking strong jam and island music coming from a barn stage and prayer in a field and some of my favorite people and seagulls chasing us on the ferry. It was the type of day that deserves a run-on sentence: so full to the tippy-top with happy things.

"We have the given life, not the planned," says Wendell Berry. This is the given life. I don't know how or why it came to be mine, but I am awfully grateful for all of it, and this season called summer.

[all photos from yesterday : ones including me taken by jayne]

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hungry eyes

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"Don't move the way fear makes you move."
(Rumi)

Thursdays are the best days around here because it means it is the end of the week and because my long traipse up the hill is always rewarded by a stop at the Queen Anne Farmer's Market (and usually a cherry bar, or a pretzel knot, or the freshest tastiest peach) and because there is usually something to look forward to about the weekend. Today I am washing sheets and towels and vacuuming and preparing for weekend visitors as I listen to Arvo Part and eat toast for dinner.

I have been graced with an abundance of time here in Seattle and that results in a wide variety of thoughts filtering through my head each day. I don't always know how to gather all the pieces together. I find myself wanting to tidy my thoughts, organize them, or at the very least sweep them into a corner. Often writing helps sort my mind, but I am also trying to learn to embrace the clamor. Just as order is important for creativity, I think clamor can lead to creativity too. Sometimes you have to just release it all and then let ideas bounce, crash, and intersect. I kind of think of it as a process of receive-release-receive.

I keep coming back to those words from Rumi. Don't move the way fear makes you move. Fear makes me strive for order, for structure, for anything that will tell me that my life is not meaningless. Perhaps that is alright at times. We are orderly creatures after all, and certainly the world appears intrinsically orderly, and beautifully so. But it can be dangerous when I look for meaning in order. There is a freedom that comes with allowing yourself to play, or to be attracted to a material for no particular reason, or to embrace failure and realize there is yet grace.

Heather mentioned recently how her photography students in Bolivia seem unable to understand the concept of creativity. In their culture, education is merely rote memorization and regurgitation, and open-ended assignments seem foreign to them. Is creativity merely a cultural phenomenon? Maybe so, and maybe people like Julia Cameron have influenced us in North America. Or perhaps those students, like myself, just need that living thing within to be awakened and a space to let their ideas wander.

[baby's breath, or the prettiest of flowers]
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ten good things

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"God has been so good, so unexpectedly, strangely good. My heart is full of trust and peace."
(Georges Bernanos, A Diary of a Country Priest)

To say those words, I hope:

01. sour cherry pie bars from the queen anne farmer's market
02. packages at my door: homemade granola from mom, long lost running shoes, and lilies from a. (don't know what makes me happier than granola and flowers)
03. sitting on a bench along the canal with mr. wolfe today as he smoked his cigar and we talked about things
04. just to be here: isn't that itself what i prayed for?
05. the difference between being and becoming, and the grace in both places
06. unexpected friendships and the kindness and spontaneity of strangers
07. kerry park and the baseball field nearby and trader joe's free coffee in the evenings
08. all this rare time that is suddenly mine
09. j. & l. and people to worry about me if i'm not home by nine
10. sylvi, really, and jayne, and emma, and elise, amy, mary, rebecca, sam, taylor, michelle and all of those who have been angels unaware to me these past few weeks

[pc: andrew wyeth]
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ivy and rain

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"We are, after all, our own crosses, but we will be given the strength to bear them."
(Madeline L'Engle)

And so I am in Seattle. Upper Queen Anne, to be exact. I will be interning at Image starting Thursday, so these first few days have been empty and free in a way I have not experienced in awhile. I like it and hate it at the same time. It has meant that I have written more in two days than I have in two months and that I have had time to explore my new surroundings and that I can read in bed for an hour or two each night. Those are good things.

I am living on a back street where every home is twenty stairs up and then ten stairs down just to get to the front door. There is a baseball field across the street and I have found comfort in being an anonymous observer at the little league games in the evenings. This neighborhood is all ivy and rain. It is not my city. I feel that acutely when I walk around. But perhaps that can change in two months.

Today I woke early and packed my bag and strolled down the steep hill to Seattle Center. I felt like I was in Disney World, surrounded by tourists and colorful sculptures and fountains and space-like things (mainly, the Space Needle, of course). I even took the monorail to the city center. I unexpectedly walked by the original Starbucks, explored the largest map store I have ever found, and walked through Pike Place Market. The flowers! Poppies and peonies and snapdragons in the largest bundles all for just $5. It was a good adventure, but I was glad to come back up the hill to this slower-paced neighborhood.

(And I left my camera cord and my Holga spool in Chicago, so I have no means for pictures except my phone for now. Soon that will come.)
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